Eric Lipton:
That’s right. As well, it would be an election law violation for him to take a campaign contribution from a foreign national. But foreign nationals can buy his cryptocurrency and give him money directly and his family. And that’s what’s happening here.
So, I mean, the president is exempt from the federal conflict of interest law. The president and vice president are the only two who are exempt. So, even though he’s taking actions that benefit the crypto industry and then actions that indirectly benefit some of these individuals that are buying, like Justin Sun, with the SEC putting a pause on that investigation, he is not actually criminally liable for that conflict of interest, because he’s exempt from that.
Additionally, the Supreme Court has ruled that any type of a notion of a bribe that, if it involves an official action by the president, then he is largely protected. So the president is doing what he wants. He asserts that he has no conflicts of interest, that these companies are run by his sons or his associates, and so, therefore, he doesn’t have a conflict of interest.
But the bottom line, when we look at his financial disclosure report, we see that he personally financially benefits from the same corporate entities that are profiting from these cryptocurrency sales.
